


The Simplest Touch

by lena-in-a-red-dress (CSIGurlie07)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23986324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CSIGurlie07/pseuds/lena-in-a-red-dress
Summary: Imagine, if you will, that Lena is a touch-know.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 11
Kudos: 230





	The Simplest Touch

Imagine that Lena is a touch-know.

Imagine, if you will, a young Lena Luthor who feels the full force of her mother’s resentment whenever Lillian touches her skin.

Imagine young Lena in a house that’s stood for six generations, walking the halls with her hands tucked under her arms lest she learn any more of the secrets that hide in its walls.

Imagine Lena at boarding school, abandoning her gloves when the teasing gets to be too much. Imagine how she tries not to touch anyone, but inevitable moments of contact shows her fragments of her peers’ lives– their hardships and secrets and neglect.

Imagine how that constant stream of negativity must slowly infect her, until she adopts the same cutthroat mentality of her peers. Think of that moment, in 5th grade, when Cindy Ryan starts monopolizing the attention of Lena’s best friend, Adam.

Imagine that moment when Lena, with a school’s collective nastiness roiling inside her head, pulls out Cindy’s diary for the world to see.

The diary is fake, but the secrets are true, and Cindy’s stunned confusion at how Lena could possibly know is enough for the others to believe. Adam thinks it’s a riot, and quotes the diary at Cindy until she transfers out mid year.

Lena forgets Cindy for almost a decade, before they run into each other just after graduation, at a club in Metropolis. Somewhere in the massive crowd is a mutual acquaintance, and Lena, desensitized by the presence of so many people pressing in around her, shakes her hand in polite, if forced, greeting.

The white hot hatred that pours from her skin clashes against the pleasant, easy smile curling Cindy’s lips. It crawls up Lena’s nose and fills her mouth with the acrid taste of vomit as she sees the nights Cindy spent over the toilet, sick with dread and anxiety. It thunders against her ears in the voice of Cindy’s father berating her for not being able to stomach the words of a few stupid girls and damning her proclivity for blabbing family secrets to the entire school.

All the fear and rage and hurt swirls and swirls and in the center of it all is Lena’s own face, wearing the cruel smirk of that day in 5th grade.

Lena rips her hand away and bolts. She staggers home and vomits herself, puking and sobbing into the toilet bowl. Lex laughs at the antics of new grads and hands her a towel. The next morning, Lena pulls out all her old gloves. None of them fit, so she wears her winter gloves in the dead heat of a Metropolis summer to the store and buys out their entire section of elbow length gloves.

She bundles up and covers all the skin she can. She claims illness until people stop asking. She stops clubbing and sticks to her lab, where everything is new and without memory.

Over weeks, then months, then years, through summers and college and grad school, Lena slowly reclaims herself. The taint of her classmates fade, until all that’s left is her shame and Cindy’s lingering hate, which becomes her own.

She isolates so well that when Lex’s arrest is announced, it’s a complete and utter shock. She visits him every week, as the company and her world shakes under her feet.

Every visit, she asks.

“Did you do it?”

Every visit, he responds.

“Of course not, ace.”

And every time, Lena swallows the lump that rises to her throat.

“Say it so I believe you.”

By the end of the trial, Lena’s given up hope. She doesn’t need to touch a thing to see where the jury’s leaning, or the way Lex unravels as he realizes the same.

On her final visit, the day before closing arguments, Lena asks one last time.

“Did you do it?”

Lex’s response is to lurch forward and grip her naked cheeks in his bare hands, leaning so close she can smell the toothpaste on his breath.

“You tell me.”

Years of images crash over her in the time it takes the guards to wrestle him away from her. She slumps against the table, gasping as scenes of carnage flash behind her eyes, the cockpit of the Lexosuit, Superman’s snarling visage as the hero pummels her over and over, driving the breath from her lungs.

She’s screaming when the prison comes back into focus, and Lex is dragged from the room

Lena doesn’t go to the courthouse for the verdict.

She knows what it will be. She knows what it should be.

Guilty. Guilty and guilty and guilty and guilty and…

When the board thrusts the company at her, so she can hold the reins while LuthorCorp gallops full tilt towards the looming precipice, Lena accepts on one condition: she won’t watch the company die.

If she gets control, then she keeps control when the stocks recover and then rise. She vows to reach new heights. Maybe it’ll be enough to wash the blood from her nightmares.

* * *

National City is… unpleasant. Too warm for gloves, no matter how light. But she pulls them on every morning, rolls up her sleeves, and gets to work.

When she meets Kara Danvers, the reporter doesn’t bat an eye at the gloves. She’s the first interviewer not to ask about them. Lena waits for the inevitable curiosity, as acquaintance slowly turns to friendship– but it never comes.

Her first game night, Lena discovers just how affectionate Kara is with her friends. Touches and hugs and leans on the couch. But never with Lena. It’s a stark realization. Lena tries and fails not to be hurt, for suddenly feeling on the outside.

The hurt turns to chagrin when she sees Kara reach for her hand at their next lunch date, only to turn aside at the last minute, grabbing a napkin instead. It’s so smooth Lena would have missed it if she hadn’t been so on edge after game night. Only then does she realize: the lack of affection isn’t a lack of affection.

It’s respect for the boundaries Kara perceives in her long gloves and instinctive habit of curling in on herself.

Relief drives Lena to break the pattern. As Kara leaves, Lena reaches out to grasp Kara’s wrist.

“Thank you for inviting me the other night,” she says honestly. “I had a great time.”

Kara’s smile is blinding. Her hand covers Lena’s, and even through the glove the touch is warm. It shoots a bolt of delight through Lena’s sternum, and the last of her doubts drift away. The touches soon become a matter of course. Always soft, always through fabric, as though Kara sees exactly what she is and accepts her in sum.

And for now, it’s enough.


End file.
